


Unmasked

by madstoryteller999



Series: Masks [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Oops, kind of Slice-of-Life, some of it is light, some of it is not light, this is supposed to be light, vignette style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29617425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madstoryteller999/pseuds/madstoryteller999
Summary: A collection of afterthoughts to Masks--or: an informal, vignette-style sequel.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi, Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Neji/Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru/Sai
Series: Masks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1786693
Comments: 160
Kudos: 501





	1. how they sleep

Sakura often overheated at night. Contrarily, she could not sleep without a blanket.

Having another person in her bed was a similar trial. She liked the weight beside her, liked the span of a hand (his hand) across her rib cage, just under the swell of her breast. And the smell of him: sharp with pine, a little bitter from smoke—at the beginning of the night, she pulled him in close, face shoved into the crevice of his neck, just to suck in breaths full of it. (She would never be able to explain the compulsion; it was neither rational nor coherent.) Within the hour, however, as her body warmed beneath the comforter—in no small part due to the fact he ran hotter than the average person —she found very little could conquer the discomfort of being _too warm_.

Sometimes, he followed her as she pulled away. Sometimes, it was merely an arm. Sometimes, it was the whole length of his body, pressed demandingly against her back. Sometimes, Sakura groaned in protest, and she could feel the curve of his mouth against the top of her shoulder. (The sadist.)

At this point, she usually kicked him away.

* * *

****

<https://chaoticeyes.tumblr.com/post/640693795947724800>


	2. how they move in together

“Have you noticed…?”

“What?”

“Well, your apartment looks like it’s never been inhabited.”

A pause. “If you say so, Sakura.”

“And you spend most of your time at mine.”

Another pause, longer this time.

“And?” The word, when it emerged, was deliberately casual.

“And,” these words came faster now, “you make excellent food and most of the meals I eat anyway, so—”

“You want me to be your live-in cook.”

“…yes.”

“It might have come to your attention that I am already, quite officially, employed.”

“Shut up. You know I don’t mean it… _literally_.”

“Then what could you possibly mean?” Amused.

“Kakashi.”

“Do please make it literal—” now, delicate, precise mockery—“How else can I possibly understand?”

“ _Never mind_. Forget I said anything.”

A deliberate sigh. “Your place is too small.”

“So?”

“So.”

“...I’ll find a dream place at a killer price within a week, just _watch me_.”

* * *

<https://bluntkunai.tumblr.com/post/640629087892799488/shinobi-slice-of-life-shaving-with-your-weapons>


	3. when there are nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: references to self-harm and abuse

Sakura had not slept well before Kakashi. This did not immediately change after him.

She suspected this was the same for him too.

Some people woke themselves up with a pinch, after all. Kakashi dug his nails into himself, viciously, ruthlessly, in his sleep. Waking up to find blood dripping onto their sheets became a regular occurrence.

But he didn’t get violent or lash out when he was woken (his eyes snapped open, dark and desperate, and recognized her immediately, as though he identified her by touch, even before sight)…not like Sakura did.

Opening her eyes to see her fist driving upward—and Kakashi above her, head angled to the side as it just flew by him—had been Sakura’s ugly wake up call to this terrible facet of herself. She had not known before. There had never been an opportunity to. There had never been someone like _him_.

“If you hadn't moved,” she said after, pale and sitting on the ground. 

He watched her, entirely too calm.

"I almost..." She pushed her hair back with shaking fingers. 

This hadn’t been a spar; this hadn’t been her pulling a punch. Her arm had been charged with enough chakra to sink the whole complex. Worse, this had happened where they slept—a place that should have been unquestionably safe. Sakura wasn’t so far off the deep end that even _she_ didn’t know this, recognize this, or...want it too (so, so badly, and now she had _fucked it all up_ , hadn't she? _)_

He crouched to her level. “You,” he said, voice flat, “couldn't have possibly been expecting perfection of me either, could you?”

_How could he conflate the two?_

“This isn’t the same, Kakashi,” Sakura shouted. Could she say it? She had to, there was no room for cowardice. “What I did— It's— _abusive,_ and this— This... whatever this is between us, it has to stop and—“

He grabbed her now, face contorted, eyes enraged.

“Don’t,” she choked out. “You think it isn’t true? Because you’re so strong? Or, no, is it that you think there’s nothing wrong because you _deserve_ it—”

He pressed her into the side of the bed, hands wrapped around her upper arms. “Watch your mouth, Sakura _._ ” He hovered above her. “If I couldn’t easily defend myself against your half-asleep attacks, you would be right to tell me to walk away. But as I can, I— _don’t interrupt me_.”

Sakura’s mouth snapped shut.

“Don’t mistake my meaning,” he said sharply, with icy precision. “ _If_ you had attempted this wide-awake, during an argument, neither my strength nor your strength would matter. You would be right to condemn your actions as such.”

He held her chin, guiding her forehead to press against his.

“But that wasn’t the case,” he said tightly. “You didn’t mean to do it. So what matters now is what you will do. What will you do?”

“I’ll work to make sure I stop,” Sakura whispered.

“As I thought,” Kakashi stated flatly. “So don’t threaten what you did just now, so lightly, ever again. Not when you negotiated so persuasively for this. If you hadn’t been prepared to _struggle_ , you shouldn’t have come to the table to bargain in the first place. You shouldn’t have dared.”

Her shoulders sagged. A second later, she pressed herself against him, nosing under his jaw, fingers carding through his hair. He surveyed her, expression unchanging.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I am prepared. I promise. I’m— Don’t leave.”

He clutched her back, just as tightly. “I will too,” he said, voice low. “So don’t make me leave either.”

* * *

<https://spnfox.tumblr.com/post/190556855022/im-in-love-with-empress-nariko-s-fanfic-a>


	4. when he becomes kage

“I’m sorry. I just can't keep quiet any longer,” Sakura sighed, flipping an egg. It landed with a horrendous splat.

His brow arched as he turned, the back of the cloak reflecting in the singular mirror in the room. **_六代目._**

_Ro-ku-dai-me._

“White really isn’t your color.” She shrugged. “Ino has been telling anyone who will listen that you should violate generations of tradition. I can’t say that I disagree. White washes you out, Hatake.”

“And what else does Yamanaka Ino say?” he drawled.

“Well,” Sakura said, eyes narrowing. “She also said that it won’t be long before some daimyo’s daughter shows up at your doorstep, bent on one knee with a ring, white cloak or no.”

“Hm,” Kakashi murmured, eyes glinting.

She blinked back. “I did nothing.”

“Somehow, I’m unconvinced.”

Sakura left the egg, even though she could smell it beginning to burn. He rocked back a step as she barreled into him. She paid no mind, gripped the carefully ironed collar of his brand new robes and yanked him back toward her instead.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she murmured, “most of the time, I’m damned grateful no one knows. Could you imagine what a pain it would be?"

"Quite."

"Other times, though, I want to—”

She stopped herself, blinking.

“Want to?” he breathed against her, voice dangerously soft. It was a challenge.

Sakura smiled, mocking. “Hm. I think you already know.”

* * *

[ https://arirna.tumblr.com/post/640044152373051392 ](https://arirna.tumblr.com/post/640044152373051392)


	5. when she becomes commander

“You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Look at me.”

And he did, finally.

Even now, it took her time to interpret him. Kakashi, indeed, hardly needed a mask to be hard to read. It didn’t make it easier, nonetheless, that he wore one now.

“Fine,” she concluded, voice low. “You’re not mad. But you can’t possibly convince me you’re happy.”

He turned away from her, shoulders tight, to gaze out the wide windows. “I knew this would happen,” he said curtly. “I knew it was only a matter of time after the war.”

“So what?” Sakura demanded, walking right up to him. “So now you've resigned yourself to it?”

“Yes,” he exhaled more than said.

She contemplated him for a moment, before tiling her head back, eyes shutting. She sighed. “It doesn’t matter what you feel, anyway. It’s done.”

She head him make a harsh, wordless noise. “You don’t understand.”

Her eyes snapped open, flashing with fire. “What don’t I understand, _kage-sama_?”

“Tsunade didn’t have legions of shinobi calling for her blood the way I do,” he spat back, turning toward her. “Her name isn’t analogous to slaughter and bloodshed like _mine_ is across countless shinobi villages and countries. The commander you served under was a different kind of commander than the one you’ll have to be now—for me. Because of me. And I know you. At a certain point, it doesn’t even matter what I am or what I’m not. You’re not the kind to manage from an office desk. You won’t delegate my safety to—”

“And why should I,” Sakura drawled back, cold, “when I’m the most capable of them all?”

“Sakura.” It escaped his mouth like a demand, and yet somehow, felt like a prayer.

But then the door to the hokage’s office swung open and every inkling of turmoil vanished from his body.

Instead of straightening, he slouched further, eyes sliding to half-mast. He had softened in the eyes of his audience, for their benefit, Sakura thought. Perhaps, it was even true to some extent that Kakashi himself had changed as well—but not enough to lose the sharp edges and savagery some now naively believed tamed from him.

(Once, those eyes might have sharpened. Once, he might have made obvious the predator he was rather than attempting to hide it.)

It was a different mask Kakashi adopted now, though a mask nonetheless. He was still brutally effective at pretending to be something that didn’t quite exist. And he had even done so well, Sakura thought, so as to make most of Konoha forget what he had once been.

But not everyone.

“Perfect timing.” His lazy tone was pitch-perfect; despite this, the sharpness of the gazes of those entering his office did not diminish, not in the least fooled. “Let me introduce you to our new ANBU commander.”

They surveyed her in turn. Sakura returned their attention unblinking.

Kakashi leaned against his table, painted gold-orange and gold-yellow by light passing through the windows, like some sort of absurd, domesticated lion sprawled in the sun. “Surely it will be no issue if we expedite today’s ceremonies. I left off at a particularly gripping part in _Icha Icha Innocence_ , you see. Not so innocent after all!” He laughed, tossing his head back, to cool silence. He straightened a second later, eyes glinting. “We will make do with just the oaths.”

This caused an outpouring of righteous indignation.

“Rokudaime-sama, you may be young and naïve to the importance of tradition, but—"

“That suits me,” Sakura said.

He looked at her, eyes crinkling in an unfeeling smile. “Excellent.”

There were grumbles of dissent, but Sakura ignored them, kneeling promptly in front of her kage.

“Do you agree to take on the role of ANBU commander?”

She could feel his gaze burning into her, as insistent as the fingers he liked to skate along her spine the night before.

“I do,” she answered, stoic.

“Do you swear to protect Konoha, its interests, and its people to the best of your abilities?”

“I do.”

“And do you swear, finally—” and he paused now, voice growing rougher—“to defend your kage, even at the cost of your own life?”

She looked up even though she knew this was against protocol, against tradition; she was deaf to the outraged hisses that erupted around her.

“I do,” she uttered without an ounce of hesitation.

* * *

[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/naruto/images/4/4a/Terai.png/revision/latest?cb=20110217011031&path-prefix=es](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/naruto/images/4/4a/Terai.png/revision/latest?cb=20110217011031&path-prefix=es)


	6. uncovering (one of) his secrets

Despite the years Sakura had technically known Kakashi, it was only after they became _more_ that she realized there were actual living people Kakashi maintained fairly ordinary relationships with. It was, possibly, one of the best kept secrets in the village. Well, that, and the man’s face.

Of course, Kakashi’s predisposition was still decidedly one of reclusion. But it became clear one Saturday night early on, when Sakura happened to stay in—to find that Kakashi did not, in fact, come home within the hour or within the next two—that he possibly maintained other obligations with _other_ people.

She had hunted him down (purely as matter of course, naturally) and found him at a bar with a select group of jounin. Asuma, Kurenai, Yamato, and Gai were the ones she could name. Among the ones she couldn’t were a man with a toothpick in his mouth, another who looked strangely familiar with a scar rippling across the left side of his face, a blonde-haired woman, and a black-haired woman. (She suspected she knew the last two.)

Sakura had watched as the group chattered on as they sipped their drinks. All the while, Kakashi had sat disinterestedly near the corner. He was the odd one out in many ways: younger than all of them, not to mention their kage. Normally, one would imagine that would make the others uncomfortable. But if they were, they didn’t betray it.

Kakashi didn’t _look_ like he had any particular investment in being there either, Sakura had thought. But Sakura knew there had to be. After all, he remained.

She watched until the end.

She followed him only a few more times after that too (just to determine the regularity of the phenomenon, she convinced herself). Eventually, when she was no longer able to justify the stalking to herself other than as some odd form of voyeurism, she left it alone.

They didn’t talk about it until about a year later, when Sakura came home with a shoulder that had nearly been hacked off.

“You’re hurt,” he said as she walked through the door.

“I’m impressed by your skills of deduction,” she muttered.

He stared at her, eyes narrow. “Go to the bathroom. I’ll get some—”

“Don’t,” she blurted unthinkingly.

Kakashi’s eyebrow arched dangerously. “Don’t?”

“I just mean—” she sighed, pressing down on her nose through her mask. “Can we skip past _how_ I know this, because I’m not proud of it, but I know that you meet with your friends on Saturday nights on the rare occasion you’re able to?”

“I see,” he said, unfazed. His gaze was particularly unrelenting. “And?”

“There’s nothing you can do for me,” Sakura pointed out. “I’m the one with medical training. So. You might as well go?”

“How generous of you. I do not accept.”

She won many arguments with Kakashi, but that was not one of them.

* * *

<https://jokeritadoodle.tumblr.com/post/187667690270/sometimes-all-of-them-just-need-a-good-drinking>


	7. when they admit it

Sakura could sense him coming from a kilometer way. She pushed herself up from the hospital bed despite the protests of the doctor hovering beside her.

“Please, commander, your body is very weak right now—!”

The door was knocked clean off its hinges. Kakashi's eyes landed on her, without an ounce of rationality.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she said, panting lightly with strain.

"Speak." The word was guttural.

The doctor shook, but managed to keep his voice cool. “She encountered a particularly virulent strain of the virus during her trip to Suna, rokudaime-sama, but we caught it in its early stages and started administering the antibiotics in time. We will run her through the regular courses of doses. We have full confidence that she will recover.”

Despite this, it was unclear if any of the mania left their kage. Killing intent had flooded the room, thick and suffocating; one of the nurses swayed concerningly on her feet. Beneath the doctor's carefully managed fear, Sakura saw bewilderment, no doubt regarding why Kakashi was _personally_ here, in the middle of the day, when another ANBU could have reported on his commander's status if he so desired.

“ _Get_. _Out_ ,” he hissed.

If Sakura hadn’t been so out of it, she might have rolled her eyes. Instead, she lowered herself resignedly into the bed and watched as the doctor and the nurses fled.For at least a minute, there was pin drop silence in the hospital room.

“Kakashi,” Sakura sighed finally.

“I shouldn’t have let you go.”

“Kakashi,” she snapped, voice stronger now. Because this was unreasonable.

And then he was by her side, crouched by her bed, not quite touching her. “You could have died from this,” he said furiously, eyes dark and wide. “From—from ordinary human sickness which would not discriminate or have any care for— _any_ of what you are. And I would have been equally helpless to do anything—”

“Years of paperwork tend to dull even the best,” Sakura agreed.

“ _Sakura_ ,” he actually, honest-to-god shouted, looking like he might begin to tear his hair out.

She stared at him. “What’s wrong with you?” she blurted. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard his voice reach that decibel before. (Had someone _heard_ them?)

“What’s wrong with me?” he echoed, incredulous. “You heartless _fiend_ of a human being. You’ve made me like this, and you have the nerve to ask?” He grasped her face, drinking her in like a starving man. “You. _You_ made me love you, and now _you’ve_ reduced me to this—”

“Kakashi!” she shouted, scandalized.

He had no sympathy for her predicament. His next words were scathing: “Oh, I know how you like to pretend, Sakura, that even after all this time you don’t already know—”

“It’s not like you were ever supposed to say it out loud!” Sakura groaned, covering her face. She peeked through her fingers a second later. “Does this…mean I have to say it too?”

He went abruptly still.

She realized, then, that the point was moot. She just had.

* * *


	8. when she says it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is for two ppl: holygalaxychild from tumblr and the glorious LegaciesandMemories :D

“ _DON’T_!”

He stopped instantly, fingers just brushing the door knob. His eyes narrowed

“Okay, okay, just one second…” he heard her growl, frustration thick in her voice.

So she had burned the kitchen down again. Kakashi’s eyebrows slowly rose, staring blandly at the door. No, he reflected, she had vowed off entering the space entirely after the third time. Perhaps, she had thrown the alarm clock, then, and taken out a good section of the wall with it. Again.

He had money now, unlike when he had been a child—but his childhood had taught him to be somewhat frugal, as a policy. At times, it vaguely occurred to him that attaching himself to this particular woman, of all women, had been a less than frugal choice.

“Come in!” she shouted, impatient. As though he hadn’t been waiting in the first place because of her.

Moving with deliberate leisure—mostly because he liked the way annoyance looked on her, the way she wore it, with tightly pressed lips and unfathomable arrogance—he crossed over the threshold, tipping his head to finally remove the hokage hat. When he looked up, he found a frosted monstrosity directly in front of his face.

“Well?” she said impatiently, looking meaningfully down at it.

“A cake.”

“ _And_?”

His gaze scanned the mismatched eyes of the drawn figure, its dramatically spiky hair.

“I suppose that’s meant to be me.”

Sakura’s face split into a wide satisfied grin. “Did you know there are kage-themed cakes? _Artisanal_ ones?”

He shrugged off his robes, tossing them over a chair. He watched her the entire while, unblinking. She read his look instantly.

“Keep it in your pants, Hatake,” she drawled, elongating herself nonetheless for his gaze. “I have presents too.”

“Can’t possibly imagine why,” he said coolly, cocking his head to follow the sinuous curve of her back. His mouth curved, in kinship.

She leaned toward him, the table between them, to pull down his mask. “You couldn’t _possibly_ have missed the parade for the esteemed day of your birth.”

“Hm.”

“All ten of them?”

“So that was why there was such a racket.”

“Lost a fledgling ANBU to a pack of sugar-crazed genin.”

“I’ll be sure to sign the paperwork for a memorial.”

She pulled back. Kakashi followed her, quick as a snake. Laughing, she shoved him back.

“Sakura,” he said. He was beginning to lose his patience for the game, if there had been any at all.

“Not yet,” she said.

“I can _smell_ you,” he told her coldly. He took another inhale. It was a mistake. His hands clutched the table with too much force; the crack across it stretched another inch. (He wasn’t even sure what number this one was—the table.)

There was no rationality for how irrational this always made him. Despite some consensus otherwise (in some circles, still), he was not, in fact, an animal. And she was only a woman—a human one at that. She didn’t smell of gardenias; she didn’t taste of sugar or honey.

But it was ambrosia. Deep and heady, and it had him at the jugular, every time.

He had no real compunction that there had been others, apparently many, before him. Not in abstract. In practice, perhaps, his indifference was less than perfect. His only defense was that, absurdly, she had chosen to offer this to _him_ , and he was helpless to do anything but guard it savagely, with nothing less than all of his best and all his worst.

He stared hungrily at her body. And knew, despite this, that it had nothing at all to do with her body, in the end. It had nothing at all to do with her arms or her hips or her breasts—except in that they were all _hers_ , and therefore, it had everything to do with them. It was about her cunt and yet nothing at all about it, except for the way it left him debilitated. Wanting. Mad.

“Sakura.”

She exhaled sharply. “Don’t,” she snapped, eyes spitting fire even as she swayed slightly toward him. She forced herself still. “I have presents, as I said, and I intend to give them.”

He paused. “If you want to give me a—”

“Don’t finish that,” she grunted, raising a hand. “You’ll embarrass us both.”

But he didn’t know that he was capable of feeling the embarrassment she implied. Not even at the beginning, for all that she had thoroughly, unknowingly entrapped him. (It had never been embarrassment that had held him, albeit only temporarily, back.)

She had said it once, with resignation and with incredulity—that she had wanted to own him. Until she had said the word— _owned—_ Kakashi had never even realized it was something he could want. To be owned. By someone else.

It probably wasn’t correct. He was sure a medic-nin—rather like the one he had been forced to meet with as a child-ANBU— would have traced the sentiment back to losing his family at a "regrettably young age." He didn’t disagree that it was probably indicative of some degree of maladjustment.

But ownership was what suited someone like him, weathered by terrors, not all subject to him, most wrought by his own hands.

But for the most part, Kakashi didn’t dwell on the issue. He simply felt.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered.

Slowly, resentfully, though every inch of him would be as aware of her with eyes shut as open, his lids slipped downward.

He felt something placed into his hands, cool and cylindrical. He opened his eyes and found a bottle of shōchū.

“Well?” she asked.

It was her favorite bottle. He said as much.

“Is it?” she said, blinking innocuously. Unlike annoyance, innocence warred with her sharp features, rendering the emotion transparently implausible.

He placed it on the table and reached for her again. She danced away, eyes glinting.

“That’s not all.” She pulled a hand out from behind her back to thrust a hefty, cast-iron pan at him, complete with a red ribbon on its handle. “Here.”

He held this, too, with dubious honor. “A pan.”

“Yes.”

“To cook food with.”

She nodded, pleased.

“Food for you.”

She curved toward him, eyes hot. “You’re not entertaining any other strays, are you?”

He dropped the pan, didn’t even flinch at the loud clang it made as it hit the ground. She didn’t either.

“You’re testing my patience, Sakura,” he asked, voice dangerously soft.

“And I’ll test it a bit longer,” she retorted. But she relented, pressing her mouth to his—gasping kisses, like she wanted to inhale him.

He knotted his hand in her hair and forced her head back.

“Don’t tell me there are more gifts,” he sneered.

She exhaled into him and walked him back, bumping against a chair and the sofa, until they fell onto the bed.

“Just one more,” she said. She leaned down and ran calloused, greedy hands all along him. Kakashi hissed and felt it. Owned.

“I see,” he said, with false calm, “so you’re reneging on your prior words. Or perhaps, you only disliked it being said aloud. Open your mouth for me.”

With a mocking flash of tongue, her lips parted. For a second, he could do nothing more than stare, the sheer _want_ paralyzing him. Then, covetous, because part of him wanted to fill even this space of her too, he pressed his fingers in. She watched him lazily, tongue sliding sinuously between his fingers.

He pulled them out harshly, moving then with blinding speed to that place between her legs.

Her mouth was by his ear. It took him a second to process the words, just as his hand cupped her.

“Love you.”

And every single muscle in his body convulsed, like she had electrocuted him. She rocked into his hand, throat exposed as her head fell back.

“What did you say?” he demanded. He followed her, curving over her.

Her eye fell on him, beneath her pale lashes, drugged by arousal. Then, something like grim determination took over. “I said,” she said deliberately, as though reciting someone else’s lines, “that I love you.”

He stared, silent.

Her teeth sank into his shoulder. “I don’t usually say it.”

“Never,” he answered.

“But I do,” she whispered, darting a glance at him, strangely soft. This, too, looked odd on her. Or perhaps it was him: the oddity of receiving it.

He felt himself shudder, eyes widening. Her arms wrapped around him, with enough strength to hurt, to make him feel—

“Love you,” she finished forcefully.

He had forgotten entirely where his hand was. She flexed when he shifted unconsciously.

“You wanted,” he started, with a calm he didn’t know he could possess.

“And now I _want_ ,” she said. She swallowed. “To love you.”

Kakashi didn't move.

It was true, in some part, that he had guessed she loved him—she had alluded to as much before. But he had not _known_ it. And he had not imagined, in the least, that she could want to.

Her lips parted again. He kissed her roughly to stop her. To maintain his (fragile) peace.

But there was no peace, because she didn’t stop. She whispered the words against him, again and again, slowly at first, and then later, frantically. And it wasn’t her mouth but it was her mouth, that he felt like he was being driven truly mad (had he thought himself mad before? how laughable), by just these words, these paltry words used by humans since the conception of speech, repeated over and over again.

She said it until there was a violent rushing in his ears, and he was flat on his back, terrified of her.

At what it meant, to realize that he had been, for some time now, not owned—but loved.

* * *

<https://www.deviantart.com/jessicamariana-jm/art/KakaSaku-531583075>


	9. epiphany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so much sap i could choke

It took her years (two) to realize it. That it had been a choice she had made, somewhere, along the way.

Once, it had felt like obsession, venomous in how thoroughly it had infected her—and she merely pulled helplessly along, spitting and spiteful, by its current. But that had only been the cunning of the deception. Madness and irrationality, those towering notions that they were, had been but useful tools to delude herself—that she hadn’t _wanted_ because she had made a choice. That she hadn’t wanted _him_ because some part of her, knowing and conscious, had chosen him.

She believed, still, that people weren’t enslaved by the things that happened to them. Nor were people, she felt now, slaves to the things they felt. She had had a choice, somewhere, along the way, and in that critical moment, unknown though it was, she had chosen.

* * *

<https://www.deviantart.com/chromageist/art/The-War-is-Over-642835841>


End file.
